The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “Oh, that was nothing.”

  “Nothing? The Vicar mentioned you in prayers, for three Sundays running.”

  “Hi, what are you two doing?”

  “Do you mind if we stop for a few moments, Helena?”

  “No, I’m all right, really.”

  “I want a rest anyway,” said Cherry, striking her racquet on her starched and laundered white skirt; while her brother lit a cigarette. He had a gold case, Phillip noticed, like that of Mr. Bloody Wigg.

  *

  After two sets they went into a room behind the parish hall, where was a trestle table and plates and cups and saucers, a gas-ring and a kettle. He felt himself to be floating in the warm friendly sunshine of the mellow September day: a most extraordinary feeling of contentment that he was no longer apart from life. He was living in the present, careless. How had it happened? Was it the presence of Milton, who showed consideration and obvious liking for him, almost a deference? Did Milton remember how he had cribbed from him in the Arithmetic paper, when their desks had adjoined in Hall during the Oxford Local examinations; and how he had not told the truth, but allowed another to be flogged instead, and so saved himself from possible expulsion?

  Had Milton told his sister what a little hero he had been, and was that the reason why she was so friendly? Or was it all his fancy, and had Milton forgotten it long ago: or even believed now, if he ever thought of it, that he had told him the correct answers, as Milton had inferred to the Magister? Anyway, what did it matter, that insignificant episode of long ago? Funny how he should remember it now, after all that had happened since August, 1914.

  As a fact, the injustice of the flogging in the Magister’s study in 1913 had come to the forefront of Phillip’s mind on one other occasion: when he had shouted against the Magister during the bayonet charge with the Guards Brigade against the Prussians in the wood near the Menin Road on 11 November 1914; but he had not known that he had shouted his most harming thoughts, in the midst of frenzied men shouting theirs.

  *

  After tea more players appeared. The Vicar came, with his wife, whom he called Miranda. Phillip remembered that Mrs. Mundy’s hair used to be red; now it was almost the colour of lead peroxide, much darker. Her eyes were still green, though the lashes were thicker, as though black cotton had been gummed on to them. Surely she did not paint, or use rouge? Mr. Mundy was quite bald, very red in the face, and rather bouncy in front, fatter in fact. He hoped he had forgotten the copy of Gould’s British Birds he had taken out of the Free Library immediately after it had been returned by his wretched, schoolboy self, with the awful remarks he had scrawled on some of the plates, particularly that of the Shag.

  “Coming to the dance tonight, Phillip?”

  “I didn’t know there was one, sir.”

  “Oh yes. It’s Leap Year, and so the gels are bringing the boys. We must see about finding you a partner.”

  “Really, sir, thank you all the same, but I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “I can only dance the hornpipe, but I’m coming! What about you, Cherry dear? Coming? Good, that’s settled. You’ll bring our wounded soldier boy.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” she said, when the Vicar had gone away. “I wasn’t going to come, but I will if you’d like to.” Silver-sand lashes fluttered.

  “I haven’t got any dancing pumps!”

  “There are some in the shops!”

  “All right, I’ll get some. But I’m a cave-man dancer, I warn you!”

  “How exciting!”

  “What time is the hop?”

  “Eight o’clock. It’s a flannel dance, by the way. Or hop, as you say. I’ll meet you here in the hall, shall I?”

  “Rather. Shall I bring my trench gramophone?”

  “That would be lovely. We can play it when the pianist is having a rest.”

  “It’s mostly classical stuff, I’m afraid. Greig, Elgar, Brahms, and Chaminade’s Autumn.”

  “I simply adore that French woman’s stuff!”

  They looked at each other delightedly.

  *

  St. Simon’s Parish Hall was en fête. Strings of flags of the Allies crossed diagonally from the wall-plates. Bowls of chrysanthemums stood on little tables around the walk, at intervals in the rows of chairs. On each table was a candle standing on a white plate, illumining the flowers. The curtain’d windows, the rafters and beams above, the pitch-pine panelling below, gave the place a cavernous appearance, wherein white forms with happy faces and gleaming eyes passed, to the haunting lilt of Leo Fall’s Eternal Waltz on the gramophone, while feet susurrated on the parquet floor made smooth, and in places almost slippery, by scatterings of french chalk.

  At one end of the hall was a daïs, and on the wall at the back hung a lithographic portrait of Edward the Seventh in a red cloak trimmed in ermine, and white satin breeches, wearing the crown and holding ball and sceptre—a Coronation portrait. Beside this picture was another, of Queen Alexandra; each had its candle, for the Vicar once had been presented to both, as Prince and Princess of Wales, when he had served as a naval chaplain in a dreadnought.

  Phillip was going round the floor with Cherry. He had not asked Helena to dance; he was hoping to make her keen thereby: while at the same time feeling that by continuing to ignore her, he was, as he put it, throwing away his chances. This made him feel the keen wire, on which his feelings seemed to be twisting, tighten into faint self-torture. With this was a desire to make Cherry bend to his will, as he felt her nature coming warm upon him as they pressed together.

  There was an interval for coffee and cake; it was half-past ten; the hop ended at midnight, and there was, when dancing began again, only an hour and twenty minutes to go. He danced on, with Cherry, feeling after each sitting-out period that he was destroying himself in Helena’s eyes.

  At half-past eleven Mr. Mundy the vicar beckoned him into the room behind a hanging curtain, where tea had been made; and there he took a bottle of whiskey out of a cupboard, and they had a secret drink together, clinking glasses.

  “Your health!”

  “Cheerho!”

  The bottle was hidden, and as Phillip passed under the curtain he saw Helena coming down the passage beside the platform, where sometimes amateur plays were performed. The passage was hardly wide enough for two to pass abreast, but something in Helena’s smiling face drew him on, politeness forgotten, and as they passed he realised that he was leaning forward and sideways to her at the same moment that she inclined her head towards him, and as they passed they kissed one another, hardly stopping. He went on into the hall, feeling to be gliding on air, with no desire to look back, as though a gleam of sunlight had fallen on both their heads at the same moment. With the sense of gliding on air he went to Cherry and sat beside her, feeling that he did not exist, that it was a dream, and Cherry’s face was glowing, too. Then Milton came over to them with a look of subdued contentment, and sat on the other side of him. Milton leaned forward, resting elbows on knees, and stared smilingly at the floor.

  Then he turned to Phillip and said, “Congratulate me! I see you have already done so to Helena.”

  Phillip’s heart seemed to explode; then it dropped away deeply beneath the floor. He controlled his breathing, and glanced at Milton, realising that he had a look of cousin Bertie on his face. He was the same build, the same broad face, relaxed and easy.

  “I do congratulate you, Milton.”

  Helena came back and sat beside Milton. Her face was shining. Phillip looked at her, smiling, but with tremulous lips. Then to his alarm he felt he was going to cry, and saying, “I’ll be back in a moment,” returned to the room behind the curtain. There the Vicar was helping himself to a quick one from the bottle.

  “Ah, you’ve caught me, Phillip! Well, join me, dear boy.”

  As they clinked glasses, Phillip said, “Did you know before, about Milton?”

  “What do you think?” said the Vicar, looking over his spectacles, and smiling. “Don’t
take it too hard, will you? There are others, you know.”

  “I was so surprised, sir. I hardly knew what was happening just now. It was a sort of butterfly kiss, a light touch on the flower of her lips, and she was gone.”

  “Helena told me, dear boy. Your health!”

  “Cheerho!”

  The Vicar looked at Phillip’s face, and said, “These things are made on earth, but they begin in heaven. I have known both Joe and Helena since they were kids, and they are as alike as two peas from a pod. Or should I say two finches of the same sub-species. You know, a chaffinch is a finch, but it knows better than to mate with a sparrow, or a bullfinch. Their patterns are different. Think of the confusion in nest-building! You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I think so, Vicar.”

  “Of course we must not tell anyone, Phillip. Joe will have to ask her father’s permission first.”

  Phillip broke into tears. Mr. Mundy put his hand on his shoulder. Phillip looked up. Soon he was smiling.

  “There!” said Mr. Mundy. “The emotional constraint is gone! You are free, dear boy. Now go back and dance with Cherry. And shall you ask Helena to dance? Perhaps too much of a gesture? It’s rather strange, isn’t it, suddenly to feel an old self slipped away, like casting a slough? But that is how we develop. Suddenly our lives are changed. Go back and dance with Cherry, dear boy.”

  The Vicar squeezed his arm, and in a daze where before it had been a dream, Phillip went back to the piano music, the candles, and the revolving figures in white.

  *

  When Mrs. Neville threw down the front-door key next morning she could see Phillip had some startling news. He came so slowly up the stairs. He was so grave and calm.

  “Well, Phillip, how did the dance go?”

  “Oh, quite pleasant, Mrs. Neville. The light touch, you know. I kissed a girl or two, and they kissed me, including Helena.”

  “Oh no, Phillip! Oh no! It can’t be true. Don’t you dare to play any tricks on me! I couldn’t stand it!”

  The round eyes stared at him.

  She was not pretending; at least, not wholly. The feuilleton, the serial story of Phillip’s vain dream of Helena, had been going on in monthly, and sometimes weekly and even daily instalments, for nearly ten years. And now, unexpectedly, the climax! The habits of mind of many years are not easily relaxed. Mrs. Neville’s round eyes stared at Phillip, as she sighed deeply, and resigned her bulk to the back of her chair.

  “I’ve lived in your life, so long now, you see——”

  “It’s no joke, Mrs. Neville. I just kissed her, and she just kissed me.”

  “What else, Phillip? What happened next? Don’t keep me in suspense like this!” She flipped a hand at him.

  “Nothing. Or everything!”

  Mrs. Neville stared at him. “Were you drunk, Phillip?”

  “No, but I had just had one with the Vicar, in the room behind the stage.”

  “What was it? Napoleon brandy?” she cried.

  “Just ordinary whiskey.”

  He told her what had happened, and having sworn her to secrecy, announced the news of Helena’s engagement to Joe Milton.

  “And that’s why she kissed you, Phillip! How sweet of Helena! And what a compliment to you! She must be fond of you, dear. Well, I don’t wonder! You’re attractive, you know, and have the lightest touch, a gracefulness, at times. Now what about Cherry?”

  “Well, as Milton took Helena home, I took Cherry to her house, kissed her at the gate, and then we kissed again, and she ran up the path blowing kisses to me, a dim ghost. It was all like Tennyson, in those songs in The Princess. So I set out for a long walk, as the night was too beautiful to go to bed. In fact, I walked about most of the night, and had an early breakfast at a carter’s pull-up in Brumley at 4 a.m. After that I walked home.”

  “What did Father say?”

  “I didn’t see him before he left for the office.”

  “Did Polly arrive last night? Have you seen her?”

  “No, she and Doris went out before I got up. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so free in my life before. I can’t realise it all yet. The way her lips parted, her eyes shone! The way her neck turned, and the chin came up, you know how rounded it is, and then the lips, slightly parted—it was so spontaneous! It should have happened in the bright sunlight of ancient Greece, where the atmosphere of eternal summer on the bare and rocky ground produces that hard bright classical poetry. Ah, if only I could write poetry, Mrs. Neville!”

  *

  When next Mrs. Neville tossed the key upon the terra-cotta tiled approach to the flat, the face looking up at her was as dejected as it had been exalted.

  “I must see you!”

  He came up the stairs so fast that she feared for his leg.

  “I shall have to get married!”

  “Oh, Phillip, what are you saying now? Don’t tell me Helena’s jilted Joe, and wants you!”

  He collapsed into his chair, and rested his face in his hands. Mrs. Neville could see that something serious had happened. She waited. At last she said,

  “Well, Phillip, what is it, dear?”

  “Polly.”

  “Polly? What do you mean?”

  “She says she’s going to have a baby.” He looked into her face, as though expecting her to cry out; but two could play at being extremely calm.

  “How very interesting life’s becoming for you, Phillip, isn’t it, when one comes to think of it? But do tell me how you know that you are going to be a father? Did Polly say so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she give any particular reason?”

  “Well, yes. She said that her, you know, has stopped.”

  Mrs. Neville laughed lightly. “Well, I doubt it is the first time a woman has thought she was going to have a baby, when she wasn’t. Did she give any dates?”

  “No, Mrs. Neville.”

  “When was the last one, did she say? About six weeks ago? A fortnight late is nothing. I was afraid at first that she was going to say from last June, just before you went out to France. Now tell me, does she know what happened at the tennis dance?”

  “Only what she heard from Mavis, that I didn’t come back until half-past five the next morning. ‘Where did you go?’ she asked me. ‘In the sheep-fold?’”

  Mrs. Neville shook with laughter. Now she knew where Polly had been with Phillip in the past; and the idea of Helena being there for five and a half hours during a dewy September night with Phillip, his head filled with lyrical notions, was extremely comical.

  “I must say, however, that this, coming right on top of the other thing, would depress anyone. But don’t worry. Polly will be here staying with your sister how long, five or six days? Until Sunday? I see. School begins next Monday, of course. Well, before she goes, bring her to tea, and then leave her with me, and I’ll find out about Miss Polly, and how far she is gone, if any way at all! You get on with your tennis, and think no more about marriage.”

  “I wouldn’t like Polly to have an illegal operation, Mrs. Neville.”

  “Of course not! The very idea! But I wouldn’t mind betting it’s just an ordinary lateness; don’t you worry your head about it. Desmond will be on convalescent leave any day now, and I’m sure he’ll be only too ready to make friends again. Oh, the boys and their girls! Go and play some more tennis with that Cherry, she sounds rather nice. Kiss Cherry, by all means. What harm is there in a kiss? If there was more genuine kissing in this world, I don’t mean the Keechey sort of kissing, which is done with razors, thinking only of one thing, the rat—no, Phillip, a genuine kiss, a token of warm affection, which is what the world so sadly misses today——Oh fouff! What am I talking like this for—let’s go the whole hog and have a little drop out of the air-raid brandy bottle!”

  “Yes,” she went on, “don’t take life so seriously, not girls, anyway, though what else there is in life, when you come to think of it, but men and women——Anyway, keep to your new-found light touch. And d
on’t, as I said, think too much of one girl, not yet, anyway. Man is a polygamous animal, at least most men are, until they find the one woman who satisfies them. Look at Byron, what he went through, trying to find happiness! Why, at one time he even had to have an affair with his half-sister, Augusta, to find out where he stood! It can’t be proved, of course, but one day something may come to light, to confirm what biographers have only surmised so far. Anyway, this Cherry sounds interesting; but don’t go and make her fond of you unless you really want her, will you? As for Helena, although she is a very nice girl, I never really thought she was your spiritual sort, dear. What has happened is that you’ve dreamed about her so long, that she became a beacon in your life. You see, Phillip, you have an imagination beyond the normal, and so you are bound to suffer when life does not appear to come up to your expectations of it. You are an idealist, you know. Try not to anticipate, take life as easily as you can. You’ve always worried far too much about things, you know; and as for being selfish, don’t you believe it! Why, you’ve been like an elder brother to Desmond and Gene, and Desmond will see it one day. When my son was young it was Phillip says this and Phillip does that, all the time. That little misunderstanding about Lily will blow over, you mark my words. She is a very nice girl; she’s been here to see me, you know. Oh yes, Lily and I are very good friends!”

  “Where is she, Mrs. Neville?”

  “Oh no, you don’t! You know very well that Lily is fond of you, and you don’t want her, so let her alone, Phillip.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “No, not deliberately, Phillip; but Lily has been very badly hurt, as you know, and if it were to happen again—— No, it must not happen again. Lily has found her vocation, and soon will be leaving the district.”

  “Mayn’t I see her before she goes?”

  “Well, you know how attractive she is, don’t you? She’s such a sweet girl, too. No; I am sure that it would be for the best if you did not see her again. Besides, she’s not really your sort, quite apart from her station in life.”

  “How do you know she isn’t my sort, Mrs. Neville?”